No more playing around, make 30 km/h school zones permanent

Winnipeg has already decided that 30 kilometres per hour is the right speed around schools.

It’s time to stop pretending that decision should expire every summer.

The city’s reduced school-zone speed limits returned Tuesday, a full week before the 2026-27 school year begins. They apply on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., from Sept. 1 until July 1.

Then, for two months, they disappear.

Scientists studying cockroach milk and nose-blowing win Ig Nobel prizes for quirky science

Ten research teams were honored Thursday at a satirical science awards ceremony that was hosted outside the U.S. for the first time due to travel concerns.

Researchers who studied milk from cockroaches and analyzed soil health using underwear received Ig Nobel prizes celebrating unusual and imaginative contributions to science.

The awards organized by a digital magazine called the Annals of Improbable Research shifted to Europe after 35 years in the United States over concerns about attendees being able to get visas.

At a convention center in Zurich, Switzerland, research teams received a custom trophy resembling a cross between a mushroom and a human foot. Among them were Matilda Brindle and Stuart West from the University of Oxford and the Florida Institute of Technology's Catherine F. Talbot, who reconstructed the evolutionary history of kissing, and the late Dr. Tokuji Unno who investigated the science of blowing one's nose.

Manitoba Hydro’s strategy: Deny, deny, deny

Here’s a good story… A man walks into your office and says, “Have I got a deal for you! I want $3 billion (plus perhaps a bit more) to build you something that you might use three or even four times a year, for maybe 30-60 hours each time. Sign here.”

A bigger grid, and a tougher one

The Free Press editorial of Aug. 21, Time for a stronger Canadian grid, makes a case that should unsettle anyone who read it. A co-ordinated attack on nine substations could bring down the American electrical grid.

Rescuers use new tech to save caver trapped vertically in Alberta’s ‘Psych Squeeze’

A caver has been rescued after being trapped underground at the Rat's Nest Cave in Canmore, Alta., in an operation that deployed volunteer-built underground radio technology for the first time.

Search and Rescue Alberta said the man became pinned in a tight spot known as the "Psych Squeeze" around 11:30 a.m. last Saturday.

The Alberta/BC Cave Rescue team was called in, and hammer drills were used to remove rock. The caver, who was trapped vertically, was eased out in a process measured in "inches per hour."

"Cave rescues are very rare and it's even rarer to have to have someone stuck in a tight space and can't free themselves," said Christian Stenner, provincial coordinator with the Alberta/British Columbia Cave Rescue Service, in an interview Friday.

Before-and-after NASA images show crater carved by a SpaceX rocket that slammed into the moon

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft circling the moon is providing the sharpest views yet of the crater carved by a crashing SpaceX rocket.

The space agency released before-and-after photos of the impact area on Tuesday.

The Falcon rocket’s upper stage plowed into the moon at 5,400 mph (8,700 kph) on Aug. 5 after drifting through space for more than a year. It launched a pair of private moon landers with experiments and even a tiny rover in 2025 as part of NASA’s push to commercialize lunar exploration.

Based on these new photos by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the fresh crater appears to be 60 feet (18 meters) across and less than 10 feet (3 meters) deep, according to scientists.

The scoop on lawn bowling

If you’ve ever wondered what bowls — better known as lawn bowling — is all about, the Free Press has the scoop on it.

First off, to get you in the right headspace it’s important to not compare bowls to alley bowling. Although there is a ball that is rolled, there are no pins at the end to knock down. Bowls is better compared to curling and bocce ball.

The game is played on a turf known as a rink. The rink can be made of grass — a bowling green — or carpet.

Both types of rinks have advantages and disadvantages, with players usually having a preference. With grass turf, bowlers need more force while rolling the ball to make it through the thicker terrain, while carpet is a smooth surface and requires a lighter touch.

Broken engine parts shattered the Ryanair plane window that a man’s head got sucked into: NTSB

Broken engine parts shattered a window on a Ryanair flight shortly after takeoff in Greece last month, causing a man’s head to be sucked through the opening before fellow passengers pulled him back inside, U.S. investigators said Thursday.

A fan blade in the Boeing 737-800's right engine broke loose, sending fragments flying out of the engine that broke the window and damaged the fuselage in several other places, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board. Greece turned the investigation over to the U.S. agency under international aviation rules.

The July 10 accident happened after the flight departed the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki. Investigators found bird remains inside the engine, suggesting the plane may have struck birds during takeoff, though they haven't determined what caused the fan blade to break loose.

The 61-year-old passenger suffered neck and shoulder injuries and friction burns.

Razed tree canopy leaves Selkirk Avenue stretch noisier, dirtier: resident

Selkirk Avenue resident Gail Allard sits on her front steps, looking at a row of tree stumps.

Until last fall, Allard would have opened her front door to a lush canopy of mature trees. Now, she has an unobstructed view of a freight terminal — the Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. intermodal yard.

Although the residential street is quiet on this August afternoon, the steady beeping of machinery moving shipping containers carries throughout the neighbourhood.

It’s the first summer since Manitoba Hydro cut down 262 mature trees — most of them Siberian elms — along Selkirk Avenue between Keewatin and Railway streets.

Scientists are certain a wayward SpaceX rocket slammed into the moon as predicted

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A SpaceX rocket that launched a pair of lunar landers slammed into the moon as predicted on Wednesday after drifting off course for the past year, scientists reported.

Although no one observed the actual 5,400-mph (8,700-kph) collision, a telescope in Chile spotted what astronomers have identified as the debris plume resulting from the crash. Space tracking experts said it was inevitable that the leftover rocket segment plowed into the moon.

It’s the latest instance of lunar litter, a problem that many fear could worsen as the U.S. and China race to put astronauts on the moon. In 2022, a Chinese rocket unintentionally hit the moon following a lunar mission, and many more stray rocket pieces likely struck the moon in decades past without scientists' knowledge.

SpaceX's Julianna Scheiman said this week that the company is working with NASA to avoid future wrecks, stressing that this projected crash was not deliberate. A combination of solar activity and gravity accidentally put it on a collision course with the moon, she said.

This organ will play one composition until 2640. It’s redefining how slowly music can be played

HALBERSTADT, Germany (AP) — A small organ in eastern Germany is the headliner of the world’s slowest concert. It has been playing the same piece of music by composer John Cage at a glacial pace for nearly 25 years.

A rare chord change on Wednesday — from seven notes to eight — represented the completion of about 4% of the 639-year endeavor of the John Cage Organ Project Halberstadt.

It was a historic moment inside the medieval Burchardi Church, in Halberstadt, Germany, that reflected the past, present and future of the project, as well as those who are following its — albeit very slow — progression.

“As fast as our world is developing, I think it’s a wonderful place to be and to come to yourself and just to be touched by this ‘being there,’"said Anneli Borgmann, chairwoman of the John Cage Organ Project Halberstadt’s board of trustees.

Canadian astronaut prepares for NASA mission to International Space Station

Growing up on a cattle farm in eastern Alberta, Joshua Kutryk says he dreamt of going to space though he never thought it would happen.

But a few months after Artemis II's lunar flyby, the 44-year-old is preparing for a mission to the International Space Station that could lead to medical breakthroughs.

Kutryk is one of four members assigned to NASA's SpaceX Crew 13 mission.

He will join NASA's Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. Watkins will be returning to the space station for the second time.

Wreckage found of Pan Am plane crash that helped lead to today’s safety briefings on every flight

Searchers have found the wreckage from a Pan Am flight that plunged into the ocean off Puerto Rico in 1952, an accident that killed 52 and led to requirements for the passenger safety briefings given on every commercial flight.

The plane, the Clipper Endeavor, made a hard landing after losing engine power shortly after takeoff. The 17 passengers and crew who survived told investigators everyone lived through the landing, but panic set in as many passengers struggled to find life vests and the crew had a hard time pulling out life rafts.

Within minutes, the plane sank. Explorers found the wreckage of the DC-4 last month by using an autonomous sonar drone to locate the fuselage and tail in 2,000 feet of water.

Now before takeoff, flight attendants instruct passengers about exit locations and where life vests are located and how to inflate them.

City tries to find the right balance in regulating personal e-vehicles

Patty Wiens was already a cycling enthusiast when she got an electric bicycle in early 2023, but she didn’t realize how much it would transform the way she got around Winnipeg.

She started riding throughout winter and stopped relying on her vehicle. Eventually, she sold her car.

“It’s not a replacement for a bike,” she said. “It’s a replacement for a car.”

Wiens, who has been dubbed the “Bike Mayor of Winnipeg” by a global cycling advocacy organization, said her e-bike is a cheaper and more environmentally friendly way to get around the city, especially as the cost of living mounts.

SpaceX Starship launch aborted on the pad at the last moment

SpaceX’s mega Starship rocket came within a second or so from blasting off on a test flight Thursday, but some of the engines failed to ignite, triggering a launch abort amid billowing clouds of smoke and vapor.

Elon Musk, the company's founder and CEO, said two engines will be replaced “to be confident of a good flight” before sending Starship from Texas on a space-skimming journey halfway around the world. It will be the 13th flight for Starship, which at 407 feet (124 meters) tall with 33 main engines is the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket.

SpaceX's launch webcast showed the start of engine ignition three seconds before the planned liftoff, viewed from a drone high above the pad. Although the company did not elaborate, onscreen data showed four engines not firing, with the remaining 29 engines immediately shutting down and keeping the rocket anchored to the pad. It was the first time a full-scale Starship experienced a last-second abort like this.

The launch team immediately began draining the fuel from the rocket.

Table tennis nationals return to Winnipeg

You’ve played in your basement and watched it from afar during the Olympics but you may never have gotten the opportunity to see the pros do it.

That’s right, the 2026 Canadian Table Tennis Championships will be landing in our very own city for the first time in a decade. From July 17-23, the Manitoba Table Tennis Association (MTTA) will be hosting Canada’s best players at the Duckworth Centre.

And Carlos Cuadra, executive director of MTTA, is encouraging Winnipeggers to come and enjoy the event.

“We were hungry. We definitely wanted to do it,” Cuadra explained. “We want to show Canada that we are capable of doing such events. And who knows, maybe try international events, too.”

Buckled concrete gives drivers the heave-ho

Highways, local roads and sidewalks have buckled and broken thanks to extreme heat in recent days, wreaking havoc with travel.

Garth Thomson was driving on the Perimeter Highway, just north of Assiniboia Downs, around 4 p.m. Sunday when he suddenly came upon a major gap in the road.

“There was a big break in the highway, which was the heaving. I had about four seconds to decide what I was going to do. So, I kind of hit my brakes and drove more towards the centre, where the big chunks weren’t (located),” said Thomson. “It happened so fast … there were big chunks (of concrete), probably a foot (per) square, sticking up.”

His convertible had bumper damage and a hole in its gas tank, he said.

If it works in Ontario, why not in Manitoba?

Grid-scale battery storage has fundamentally changed the global energy landscape — and Manitoba needs to get on board.

Battery systems store large amounts of excess electricity for when it’s most needed. While they can be charged from any generation source, they are especially beneficial for integrating wind and solar power, which vary with weather and time of day. Batteries allow electrical grids to meet the need for firm, dispatchable and affordable capacity using renewable energy, rather than relying on coal, nuclear and fossil gas. They also provide numerous other benefits, including reducing overloading of transmission infrastructure and helping to regulate the grid’s frequency and voltage.

Average costs for grid-scale batteries plummeted by more than half between 2023 and 2025 and installations have skyrocketed in China, the U.S., Australia and Europe. Texas now has 16,500 megawatts (MW) of battery storage, while California has 15,200 MW. Closer to home, Ontario recently awarded 640 MW of contracts to three battery storage projects in a competitive auction, with batteries beating out fossil gas-fired power plants on cost every time. One of these projects will be built near Dryden, only four hours east of Winnipeg.

Each battery system will provide eight hours of capacity but will cost considerably less than Ontario’s previous battery procurements, which provide only four hours of capacity. With this latest auction, Ontario has now secured 3,600 MW of battery storage capacity, including the operational Oneida (250 MW), Hagersville (300 MW) and Napanee (250 MW) projects. Almost all have significant Indigenous participation, with the latest procurements boasting 50 per cent First Nations ownership.

China takes a page from SpaceX and recaptures the first stage of a rocket to reuse it

BEIJING (AP) — China successfully recaptured the first stage of a rocket after a launch on Friday in a breakthrough for the country's space program, state media said.

The first stage of a Long March-10B rocket separated from the second stage after liftoff and returned to a platform in the sea, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

It was the first time China recovered the first stage of a rocket. America's SpaceX has been doing so for several years to drive down launch costs by reusing the booster that helps lift the satellites or whatever the rocket is carrying into space.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been recovering their rockets since 2015, saving vast amounts of money by recycling them rather than ditching them after liftoff. SpaceX leads the pack with more than 600 landings of its first-stage Falcon boosters, steering them to ocean barges as well as landing zones near the launch pads. Just this week, SpaceX launched a booster for the 36th time, a new record.

German aerospace company signs 10-year deal to use Nova Scotia rocket launch pad

HALIFAX - The company vying to build Canada’s first commercial rocket launch pad in Nova Scotia has signed a deal with a German aerospace firm that could see orbital launches by 2028.

Halifax-based Maritime Launch Services Ltd. says Germany’s Isar Aerospace plans to build a dedicated complex for its Spectrum rocket at the Nova Scotia company's site near Canso, N.S., on the eastern shore.

The two-stage rocket is designed to carry small- and medium-sized satellites into space. The German company, which has already established its first launch site in Norway, has created a new Canadian subsidiary, Isar Aerospace Canada Inc.

"While every nation needs data from space, almost no nation has the end-to-end capability to access it independently,” Alexandre Dalloneau, Isar’s vice-president of mission and launch operations, said in a statement.

Five things you should know about Canada’s new fleet of submarines

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberal government on Monday named Germany's ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems as the preferred bidder to build the navy's next fleet of submarines.

That means Canada will now enter into months of closed-door negotiations with TKMS.

The firm competed with South Korean defence firm Hanwha Ocean for the lucrative contract.

Here's a quick look at what is behind this major military purchase.

The Bird River offers prime kayaking conditions in late spring

A two-hour drive northeast of Winnipeg, the lower Bird River is a popular draw for whitewater enthusiasts.

The water moves fast and the hazards — rapids, rocks and technical drops — are challenging.

This is not a beginner-friendly run. Paddlers need to keep their wits about them as they roll through Class 1 to 4 rapids.

The Bird River, flowing through the traditional territory of the Sagkeeng First Nation, stretches from the Ontario border, through Nopiming Provincial Park, before reaching the Winnipeg River, east of Lac du Bonnet.

Harvard professor with polarizing alien theories is picked to lead Trump administration UFO council

WASHINGTON (AP) — A polarizing Harvard astronomer known for splashy theories about alien visits has been tapped by the Trump administration to lead a team of outside scientists to study the national security risks posed by UFOs.

Avi Loeb, a cosmologist who studied black holes and served as head of Harvard’s astronomy department until 2020, was recently appointed to helm a new scientific advisory council tasked with investigating the origins of mysterious orbs and other objects reported by military personnel in recent years.

Loeb’s team will report to a new panel focused on UFOs, now often referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP. The panel was established by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It’s part of the push announced by President Donald Trump in February to declassify more information about the issue.

“It’s like a detective story,” Loeb said in an interview. “It’s a lot of fun, as long as you don’t pay too much attention to the critics.”